Joomla is an award-winning content management system that helps even the common people to build powerful and attractive websites for their businesses. However, with the easy availability of various extensions for Joomla, people often get confused as to which one is the best to use. After developing modules, components, plug ins and templates, one needs to develop extensions for almost everything. This helps in making the capabilities of the core Joomla software program endless.

Some of the Joomla extensions that are popular with the website owners due to their abilities can be enlisted as follows:

1. Community Builder: This extension has many key features such as image uplod, extra profile fields, ajax email, front end workflow management, and many others that are quite helpful to the user. Moreover, this is the place where the forum communities of various Joomla application users can share their experiences.

2. JCE Editor: though joomla already has a default editor called TinyMCE having great features, there are many looking for greater control on editing such as convenient image loader, total font controls, smilies, table builder, and many other features. In order to accomplish the same, one needs to have JCE or Joomla Content Editor by his or her side.

3. Xmap: with the cut throat competition in today's internet world, almost all website owners try to achieve that ever elusive high search engine ranking. One of the major way to achieve the same is by creating sitemap for the website. However, it is often tedious to maintain them when managing an ever-changing dynamic website pages. Xmap helps in an easy creation of a visual html sitemap for the main users and an XML sitemap for the benefit of the search engine crawlers.

4. Virtuemart: this Joomla extension helps in changing a simple Joomla website into an ecommerce website which may suit the needs of the customers much more aptly.

5. JoomSEF: The SEF in the JoomSEF means search engine friendly. By default, no Joomla application builds search engine friendly URLs for the website. Instead, they are quite ugly and hard to read at one go. JoomSEF helps in solving this problem for the users and search engines by creating much simpler and user-friendly URLs.

6. Slide show Pro module: this extension helps in developing all types of slide shows on the website itself. Supporting three different languages, it is a perfect extension for those looking to have slide shows on the website.

7. JomSocial: this extension is actually a group of components that extends the Joomla software capabilities and also helps in building personal social networking website. They have many features that make it quite favourable with the customers such as buddy system and private messaging, and various others.

This is just a small list of some of the top Joomla extensions that can be used to help the website owners. There are many more that can be chosen depending upon the needs and requirements of the user.

Joomla offers a variety of option when displaying your web content. Whether you are using it for a blog, news, or a web site for your company, you'll find a content style that suits to your needs. You can change the style of content depending on your preferences.

Joomla being built as an open source platforms, this gives developers the opportunity to study and create the perfect shopping cart experience. Not only that, several extensions to Joomla have been built to further create and give users a more personal touch to their Joomla websites or web page. Extensions include Joomla components, Joomla modules and Joomla plugins, as well as language packs and templates.

Some extensions are :

· Dynamic form builders

· Business or organisational directories

· Document management

· Image and multimedia galleries

· E-commerce and shopping cart engines

· Forums and chat software

· Calendars

· E-mail newsletters

· Data collection and reporting tools

· Banner advertising systems

· Paid subscription services

There are mainly five types of extensions :

· Components

· Modules

· Templates

· Plugins

· Languages

Component

A Component is the largest and most complex of the Extension types. Components are like mini-applications that render the main body of the page.

Many of Joomla!'s core features are provided by the use of default Components such as:

· Contacts

· Front Page

· News Feeds

· Banners

· Mass Mail

· Polls

A Component manages data, set displays, provide functions, and in general can perform any operation that the core code does not function.

Components works together with Modules and Plugins to enhance to display and functionality form the standard Article and content display. Together, Joomla's capabilities are completely expanded and transformed.

Modules

An extension that is used for page rendering is a Module. Modules are used for small bits of the page that are generally less complex and able to be seen across different components.

Modules are like little mini-applets that can be placed anywhere on your site. They work in conjunction with Components in some cases and in others are complete stand alone snippets of code used to display some data from the database such as Articles (Newsflash) Modules are usually used to output data but they can also be interactive form items to input data for example the Login Module or Polls.

Plugins

One of the more advanced extensions are Plugins. Plugins is a section of code that runs when a pre-defined event happens within Joomla. Plugins allows developers to change the way codes behaves depending which Plugins are installed.

Languages

The most basic and critical Extension is a Language. Joomla is released with multiple Installation Languages. To include all the translations currently available would bloat the core package and make it unmanageable for uploading purposes. The Language files enable all the User interfaces both Front-end and Back-end to be presented in the local preferred language.

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What's a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system is a software that allows users to keep track, update and manage every piece of content on your web. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. Using CMS requires almost no technical skills or knowledge to manage, it’s as simple as using Microsoft Words! Since CMS manages all of your contents, you don’t have to.

What are some real world examples of what Joomla! can do?

Joomla is used all over the world to power Web sites of all shapes and sizes. For example:

· Corporate Web sites or portals

· Corporate intranets and extranets

· Online magazines, newspapers, and publications

· E-commerce and online reservations

· Government applications

· Small business Web sites

· Non-profit and organizational Web sites

· Community-based portals

· School and church Web sites

· Personal or family homepages